Sorry, but I do feel sorry

Friedrich Nietzsche would have loved I'm a Celebrity... Get Me out of Here. That renegade philosopher, who despised compassion and argued for a strong and pitiless society, would have been on his mobile phone day and night, voting for Jan Leeming to do more bushtucker trials.

Not that his vote is needed. At the time of writing, thanks to the Nietzschean British public, Jan has been chosen to do three trials in a row. She's been locked in a mineshaft and covered in toads. She's been lowered into a Perspex box full of snakes. She's been ordered to eat locusts and kangaroo testicles. Jan Leeming is 64. What happened to helping old ladies across the road and offering them comfortable chairs?

Yes, I appreciate that one is no longer supposed to refer to a person of 64 as 'an old lady'. Sterling work has been done by many brave women to raise awareness of their continuing professional usefulness beyond 60, by medical research geniuses to allow sexagenarians to have babies, by ageing actresses to reveal the joys of sex with toyboy lovers and by the world's finest cosmetic surgeons to make many sixtysomethings indistinguishable from their granddaughters. From a personal point of view, this has enabled me to look forward with great eagerness to being 30 years older than I am now, in the hope that I will finally look hot, work hard, shag all night and get pregnant.

But there is a down side to all this marvellous emancipation, which is that, in learning to respect older people as equals rather than elders, we have stopped sympathising with their possible loneliness, financial need or physical frailty. If you don't want 'special treatment', you don't get special treatment. And special treatment is rather nice.

As a relatively young woman, I know I don't want men respecting me so goddamn much that they don't offer to help lift my suitcase on to the train. If I were 70, I suspect I'd want that even less. Would it be so wrong to spare Jan Leeming some of these trials just because she's less physically capable than the thirtysomething blokes? Just to be nice?

I am also aware that I'm a Celebrity is a circus in which the contestants are paid a lump sum to cavort on our screens, and many of you will not only never accept it as a meaningful human litmus test, but consider it an entirely amoral universe. I'm not of that school. I have seen the moral structure imposed on reality TV by viewers, who always vote for the most honest, decent, brave and kind players to win.

So the third thing I know is that Jan Leeming is getting these trials only because she complains a lot and is seen to be difficult. The viewers are not bullying her because she's the oldest contestant or because she is physically weak. But neither are they letting that stop them. This abandonment of pity may be politically admirable, but emotionally it doesn't feel right. It's upsetting to watch.

If you aren't offended by my outdated and condescending views towards not-that-elderly Jan, let me test you on Heather Mills. I'll come right out and say it: I feel sorry for her because she's only got one leg. Sue me, I do. I know that disabled people have done an even better job of liberating themselves from the burden of sympathy than 'Silver Age' women have; I know that in seizing their rightful place at work, at school and in society, they would also prefer to be insulted just like everybody else. But, watching Mills being ripped apart by the press, I can't help thinking: 'Don't be so mean. She lost her leg, she's still having operations on the stump, and she could do with a break.'

My patronising sympathy is not reserved for the ageing and legless. I can't bring myself to go and see the Borat movie because I feel too sorry for the people being tricked. Sacha Baron Cohen has great comic talent and, for various personal reasons I also think he's a very good person, but the gulled fools' public embarrassment is so poignant that I can't watch the film. And yet it is a massive success.

Compassion is dead. It has been written off as insulting and disrespectful. In achieving greater emancipation for anyone who is old, female, one-legged, gullible or simply human, we said goodbye to that soft tendency.

So perhaps we should, as Nietzsche would have done, crack open the champagne and say hurrah, we are finally free from all that weak, benevolent Christian nonsense which held us back for so long.

Nietzsche's philosophical career ended in 1889 when he suffered a complete mental collapse.

Ha!

Sex for sale? Not in Dorset

A student from Dorset who advertised a date with herself on eBay has had her listing removed from the site on the grounds of being 'indecent'. The student, Laura Davies, had made clear in an additional note that sex was not on offer.

Under the circumstances, I do think it's best that the advert was removed, lest any bidders get the wrong impression. It was the additional note which offered false hope. Not having sex on a first date is supposed to mean that you're really serious about somebody.